2

I make a lot of presentations using my Laptop and a Beamer. Therefore i clone the screens.

Sometimes i need to show a video that is not part of the presentation, so i stop the presentation, open the filemanager and do some other stuff to start the video.

Unfortunately the audience see all the steps i must do to get the video starting. Is there any command or shortcut to freeze the external display?

Improve this question
1
  • Can i set the refreshrate to 0?
    – Grim
    Commented Sep 29, 2015 at 18:49

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

The simple solution would be to have the video already opened, but paused, in the background and switch to it with Alt+Tab.

However, yes, there is a command to turn off (rather than freeze) the display. First, get the name of your external display:

xrandr

That will list connected displays. If your external one is, for example, VGA-1, you can turn it off with:

xrandr --output VGA-1 --off

And back on with 

 xrandr --output VGA-1 --auto

You could then map those commands to a keyboard shortcut and use that to turn the display off and on.

Improve this answer
4
  • Turn the display off will guide the beamer to search for a signal from another input, the audience will become noticed of this.
    – Grim
    Commented Sep 29, 2015 at 15:53
  • @PeterRader another choice might be to extend the desktop onto the external screen instead of mirroring. That way, you can have what you want shown on the external display and the rest on your machine's.
    – terdon
    Commented Sep 29, 2015 at 17:10
  • But the audience will see the draging of the window from left to right. I could make a screenshot and drag behind the always-on-top display of the screenshot but i think its more easy to find a way to freeze the screen.
    – Grim
    Commented Sep 29, 2015 at 18:46
  • @PeterRader the audience will only see the right (or left) hand side. All they'll see is a window appearing on screen. In any case, personally, I would just have the video already ioen so you can switch to it in a second instead of needing to futz around with finding it, opening it etc.
    – terdon
    Commented Sep 29, 2015 at 19:38

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.